


Home

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-30
Updated: 2011-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tag to 1x23; Danny's discharged from the hospital</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

Steve sends Danny home at 5.13pm.

"Excuse me?" Danny says, eyeing Steve over the top of a report. "I must be losing my hearing, because I swear to god you just said I should go home, and I know we're nowhere near done corroborating what Sang Min said."

Steve should've known it would go down like this. "You just got out of the hospital this morning."

Danny pulls a face, like he's almost impressed with Steve's sleuthing skills, nodding as he looks around the room at Kono, at Jenna, at Chin. "I remember as much."

"So – "

"So, what?" Danny asks, setting his report down on the tech table. "So – that makes me twelve years old and in need of mollycoddling, is that what you think?"

Steve feels his own exhaustion creep up a couple of notches. "Danny – "

"So – you think I don't know my limits, is that it? That I'm incapable of drawing a line and saying, hey, I should sit for a while, or maybe, just maybe, I should take the rest of those drugs the nice doctors gave me before they sent me on my way?" Danny pulls a prescription bottle out of the pocket of his pants, shakes it dramatically.

Steve is, officially, too tired for this shit – he folds his arms, stares Danny down. "I think you've drunk three bottles of water in the last two hours and still haven't had to take a leak – you're dehydrated, despite the IV. I think you wince every time Chin sends something up to the screens, like the movement's making your head spin, and you've been sitting more than usual. You ate half a sandwich at lunchtime, which I understand, atropine's hard on the stomach, you're probably not looking to eat a steak right now, but if you try and tell me you don't have a headache I'll call you a liar, flat out, in front of everyone."

Danny grimaces, teeth clenched, mouth a thin line. "Steven – "

"I lost ten years of my life yesterday," Steve says, challenging him to dispute it. "Indulge me. Bitch me out if that's what you need to do, but go the fuck home, Danny, get some rest."

"He's right," Kono says gently.

Danny glances over at her, shakes his head like they're all letting him down. "Not you too, rookie. Stay out of this one."

Kono holds his gaze. "No can do, brah."

Danny lets out a breath, touches the tip of his tongue to his upper lip. "For the record," he says to Steve, taking a couple of steps closer, "you are in the doghouse for . . . I can't even put a time on this. Forever, okay? You're in the doghouse forever."

"I – "

"Do not talk to me right now," Danny says as he turns and walks away. "Don't even think it."

Steve's thinking plenty. He just doesn't share any of it with his team.

\-----

It's almost eleven when Steve calls Danny's number, the instinct to check in on him as urgent as the one that made him send him home. Sang Min's in a safe house; prosecutors from a half-dozen jurisdictions are picking over the bones of his statement. He redials when he gets Danny's voicemail, redials again and again and again. It's the sixth call in a row before Danny picks up.

"Fuck you, McGarrett. I am at the beach."

This, Steve thinks, adrenaline flooding his system, is why people aren't supposed to use their cell phones and drive. He angles over to the shoulder of the highway and puts the truck in park. "You're where?"

"I'm at the beach."

"You hate the beach."

Danny laughs, and the sound's more than a little off. "I'm at the beach, Steven."

Steve glances at his phone – two taps of his finger and a GPS app starts tracing the call. "You like cities," he says with the phone back against his ear. "Skyscrapers, no jellyfish, no tsunamis."

"True, very true."

"But you're at the beach."

"I'm at the beach."

Steve glances at his phone – no location yet. "Why are you at the beach?" There's a long silence at the other end of the line, and for a second Steve thinks he lost him.

"Because it was here," Danny says at last, and Steve frowns, gestures half-heartedly at the empty cab, forces himself to focus when the GPS app beeps against his ear.

"I'm coming to get you," he says, and ignores Danny's spluttering, checks the map his phone offers and manfully doesn't turn on the sirens and lights.

\-----

It's a ten minute drive, but the beach is small, away from usual tourist haunts; Steve counts seven couples and three people with dogs as he pulls into a parking spot. Danny sticks out - it's easy to spot the guy in a button-down, ambling back and forth in the dry, loose sand.

"Hey," Steve shouts as he jogs toward him. "Hey, you okay?"

Danny pauses in his pacing and spreads his hands. "Am I okay. The sixty-four thousand dollar question, huh? Huh? Am I okay."

Steve approaches cautiously, scans Danny for visible injuries, checks the beach around them for an empty beer can or two. All he sees are Danny's shoes. "What gives?"

"Confusion, Steven." Danny stuffs his hands in his pockets, rocks back on his heels, looks out toward the waves. "This has been a very confusing couple of days."

"Confusing?" Steve asks. "Confusing . . . how?"

"I was exposed to sarin yesterday, I believe you were there." Danny rolls his shoulders. "Not in New Jersey, mind – not where there are multiple targets and public transportation hubs and large sports arenas, any of which might be an excellent target for a criminal with a penchant for mass chaos – no, no, I am exposed to sarin in a beach house on Oahu. Sarin mixed with _milk_. This is not the way I expected to meet a nerve agent, I gotta tell you."

Steve tilts his head. "You expected to meet a nerve agent?"

"And then there's Rachel," Danny says, rocking back again. "Rachel, who flies home to be at my bedside, who falls asleep in my arms, and there are some good memories there, good memories of her and me and falling asleep together, good memories of hospitals, and Gracie, and god, you know, I remember all that."

"Okay." Steve shifts to stand at Danny's side, folds his arms across his chest.

"Except it's not." Danny blows out a breath. "It's not – it's not Jersey, it's not the two of us newlyweds, or so sleep-deprived we closed our eyes wherever we were when Gracie finally fell asleep, it's not then, it's now, and I love her, I do, this dumb heart I got dealt doesn't understand your short-term lease arrangements, but what the hell does it mean when she comes back and Stan's still away and I'm high as a kite, I ask you, what is that?"

Steve wets his lips in anticipation of having something to say, but finds he's got nothing.

"And you," Danny says. "Not the yelling, not the fact that you creepily know when I'm headed to the john or not, this is the kind of behavior I realize the government spent a very long time etching into your bones, I can understand it, I can forgive it, maybe, eventually. But you," he says again. "You and that face, you kept looking at me, _keep_ looking at me, and it's . . ." He turns his head. "Confusing. I am confused."

Steve meets his gaze, sees everything that Danny's not saying despite his verbiage, feels his heart skip and clatter in response and his throat tighten up, his stomach strain. "Yeah?"

"See?" Danny says. "That face. That one right there. That's the face I'm talking about, why are you making that face, why you gotta . . ."

And Steve can imagine it – imagines that he's showing a little of the tumult inside him, the fear he'd felt, the yawning chasm that had beckoned him, how he'd known he wouldn't make it through, not this time, this loss. "Is it – " He stops, clears his throat a little, tries to remember that he's done worse than tell the truth in the past. "Is it so confusing? This face?"

Danny sags at that, closes his eyes. "No," he says, and sits down in the sand. "Shit." He folds his hands at the back of his neck. "I want you to understand that I was fucking terrified," he says, raising his voice as though Steve won't be able to hear him, three feet above.

Steve sits down too, steeples his knees. "Well, who wouldn't be?"

"Who wouldn't be, he asks," Danny mumbles, looking out at the ocean, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Like it's ordinary. Like it's expected."

"You couldn't breathe," Steve says, and his voice is steady, he's proud of that.

"I thought – Grace, he'll get Grace, he'll remember I'm picking her up, he'll explain everything, he'll do whatever he can. I knew if I – I knew she'd have Rachel, you know, but I wouldn't have had the chance to say . . . she wouldn't have heard . . ."

"Hey. You tell her every time you see her, every time you say goodbye . . ."

"But I knew, I did, I knew you'd do that," Danny continues, like Steve hasn't said a word. "I knew you'd tell her I was brave or something, that she should be proud of me." Danny shakes his head. "But who was going to tell you, you know? That's what I was thinking, who the fuck tells him, who the fuck goes to his place and tells him that I . . ."

"You are out of your mind," Steve says, suddenly angry. "You think I needed someone to – "

"You would have made it about you fucking up," Danny snaps. "Don't bullshit me, Steven. You would have added another name to the tally you're keeping of everyone you think you ever let down, and the last fucking thing I wanted was to be the next name, you hear me? If I die, it will be because I was – what am I even saying – just, don't take that on, don't _ever_ take that on because of me, I will fucking _end_ you if you – "

Which is when Steve kisses him, which is awkward – the angle's bad, Danny's not expecting it, he's furious and still talking and his hands are in motion. Steve gets their lips together for about a second before Danny shoves at him, pushes him off balance, but Danny climbs over him before he can summon up regret, kisses him like he's running out of time, like he needs Steve's hands on him the way he needs air. Steve feels the first touch of Danny's tongue like a shock, live current, buries his hands in Danny's hair, loses himself in what he thought he'd lost, and there's sand beneath his back, creeping down his collar, but Danny's close, skin too hot, and Steve whines when Danny pulls away.

"Our timing is fucking terrible," Danny says, dropping his forehead against Steve's shoulder. "That was – I want to do things to you that . . . Shit, my head is going to explode."

Steve steadies himself, pulls in air. "I told you, you need rest."

Danny props himself up on one elbow, face a rictus of disbelief, "Really? _Really_? That's what you're going with?"

Steve has to grin, has to, something's knocked loose inside him, wild and a little hysterical with relief. "Come back to my place," he says. "My bed's great."

Danny shakes his head, but there's a smile trying to get out, Steve can see it. "Is that a line, McGarrett?"

"No." Steve grins at him. "It's just . . . it's just a bed."

"Just a bed," Danny says, one eyebrow raised. "There's metaphor, something, my brain wants to, but . . ."

"You're confused," Steve says, schooling his face into an expression of mock concern, patting Danny on the arm.

"Fuck you," Danny says, laughing at last. "Fuck you, I open up to you, I expose my vulnerabilities – "

Steve makes a show of looking down as if he can see all the details of where they're plastered against one another. "I would have remembered you exposing yourself."

Danny whaps him up the head. "Focus."

"I am very focused," Steve says, and rolls his hips, making Danny swear sweetly, eyes snapping closed. "You were saying?"

"Bed," Danny says, the word a little strangled. "You were offering me your really great bed, and I was about to accept, because of how I feel like shit and have since, oh, the moment I walked in this morning. Ah, ah!" he says, waving a finger in Steve's face. "I have confessed, do not get smug about it, or I will take my exposed whatever and . . . I don't know where I'm going with this."

Steve smiles, relief and affection a heady mix, and eases himself out from under Danny, stands and offers him a hand, pulls him to his feet. "Home," he offers. "You were going home."


End file.
